High-pressure seals play an indispensible role in leakage prevention for those applications, such as liquid chromatography, in which a pump moves fluid under pressure. For instance, in liquid chromatography systems, generally, one or more high-pressure pumps take in solvents and deliver a liquid solvent composition to a sample manager, where a sample awaits injection into the mixture. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) systems, in particular, use high pressure, ranging traditionally between 1,000 psi (pounds per square inch) to approximately 6,000 psi, to generate the flow required for liquid chromatography in packed columns. In contrast to HPLC, ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) systems use columns with smaller particulate matter and high pressures approaching 18,000 psi to deliver a mobile phase.
Typically, in such liquid chromatography applications, the high-pressure seal resides within a gland in the pump head. The outside diameter (OD) of the high-pressure seal provides a seal against a surface of the gland while the inside diameter (ID) of the high-pressure seal provides a seal against the pump's reciprocating plunger. Some conventional seals designed for high pressure applications though have been found to leak at pressures greater than 6,000 psi.